Page:Early poems of William Morris.djvu/165

 And everything I can see there,

Sick-pining in the marshland air,

I note; I will go over now,

Like one who paints with knitted brow,

The flowers and all things one by one,

From the snail on the wall to the setting sun.

Four great walls, and a little one

That leads down to the barbican,

Which walls with many spears they man,

When news comes to the castellan

Of Launcelot being in the land.

And as I sit here, close at hand

Four spikes of sad sick sunflowers stand,

The castellan with a lone wand

Cuts down their leaves as he goes by,

Ponderingly, with screw'd-up eye,

And fingers twisted in his beard—

Nay, was it a knight's shout I heard?

I have a hope makes me afeard:

It cannot be, but if some dream

Just for a minute made me deem

I saw among the flowers there

My lady's face with long red hair,

Pale, ivory-colour'd dear face come,

As I was wont to see her some

Fading September afternoon,

And kiss me, saying nothing, soon

To leave me by myself again;

Could I get this by longing: vain!

The castellan is gone: I see

On one broad yellow flower a bee